The Sandbox

GWOT hot wash, straight from the wire

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FIVE OBSERVATIONS FROM BAF |

October 15, 2012

Name: SidewaysDeployed to: Afghanistan

I
hit the ground here in Afghanistan this week and I am still taking it
all in. I’m getting oriented and moving around a lot, but I wanted to
get a blog post up. So, with a tip of the hat to El Snarkistani, I am going to share with you “Five Observations From Bagram.”

1.
Bagram* is unrecognizable to me. I should probably note that the last
time I was here was in the summer of 2002, but I am still astonished at
the transformation. When I passed though Bagram in ’02 we did laundry in
steel bins with washboards. There was not a hardened facility to be
found; everyone and everything lived in tents. The mine flailer ran 24
hours a day and the sound of it clearing UXOs* was a part of life that it
felt a little weird getting used to. There were virtually no paved
roads, the entire installation (such as it was) remained blacked out at
night. I clearly recall the stars at night being breathtaking, yet last
night it was all I could do to make out the moon from the glut of
environmental lighting and the predominant feature in the night sky was
an awkward aerostat that swam silently like some tethered white Koi fish
in a dark blue-black pool.

2.
A quick glance across the chow hall this morning gave me pause. I
couldn’t help but notice the sea of contractors who — by a quick and
unscientific count — outnumbered uniformed personnel by 2:1. I have no
fundamental objection to civilians working in a combat zone — zero. But
I’ve got to wonder if in the end all of these contractors are really a
good idea. It has been my experience that nobody takes care of people
in uniform like people in uniform do. Furthermore, in a service-based
system it’s often very difficult for service members to get satisfaction
out of intractable civilians who are unwilling or simply cognitively
unable to step outside of their lane to solve problems. Bagram is
swarming with contractors, and while the DoD* is certainly not a model
organization for efficiency, I’ve got to wonder if contracting,
subcontracting and then subcontracting again is really in our best
interest. If reducing the military footprint is quietly done by
contracting all the support functions I am not certain it’s cost
effective.

3.
This place is wired. From my tent in the Warrior Compound of Bagram I
have exactly 54 WiFi Signals to choose from. There is a WiFi booth
where you can sign up and basically log on from anywhere. The USO
facility at the Warrior Camp is an impressive space, full of video
games, phones, computers, two book rooms, a popcorn machine and lots of
common areas. Free WiFi is a big draw and it’s good to see servicemen
being taken care of in a deployed environment. All of the amenities of
home seem to have normalized deployed life for so many of the younger
troopers. If you’ve joined the service since 2003 or so, deployments
have been drastically different (for the vast majority of troops) than
they were in the early days of OEF/OIF. I wonder what the long-term
effects of that will be on the expectations of younger troops next time
we go to war.

4.
The Chow is actually pretty good. There are a number of DFACs across
BAF and I was impressed by the selection. My last deployment was to
Haiti following the earthquake (it doesn’t get much more expeditionary
than that) and we ate MREs for over 40 days. I wasn’t expecting the
variety and quality of food available. It’s chow hall food and will
certainly get monotonous after a while, but overall it exceeds my
expectations. Caveat: I am well aware that there are lots of troopers
living under much more austere conditions with few if any amenities, but
if you run the numbers of troops in country and troops at main bases,
the quality of life for the vast majority is fairly good.

5.
I found the AAFES* presence is not in line with what I had anticipated
after seeing all the other vendors and services available. All things
considered, the AAFES presence here is the least developed. The Warrior
camp has a trailer just like we had within a month or so of arriving in
Haiti. The main base AAFES is decent and has a fair selection of
goodies and a decent Military Clothing and Sales section, but I was
honestly expecting the presence to be a bit more robust. This is not a
complaint, just an observation. Perhaps the AAFES presence is not as
high a priority because of the access troops have to all sorts of other
services and if that is the logic behind it then I am okay with that.

That
wraps up my first post from Bagram which will hopefully be my last. While life here is fairly comfortable it does not feel like
Afghanistan. The main road on base is closed every morning for PT,
there is a lot of saluting going on and there are tons of people milling
about. It feels more like I am on Ft. Stewart or Ft. Bragg with the
exception of the occasional IDF event. I’ll be hopping forward to
another site in the coming days and hope to get another post up soon.

Comments

Call me cynical, but there is a lot of money to be made from these endless wars on the civilian side. Like Eisenhower said, 'beware of the military industrial complex'. Now in addition to hardware, there is a huge service profit center.